[Looking4Truth]

I've just about had it. Why, you say? It's this constant 'leapfrogging' of technology. I worked in the IT world for almost 20 years. I learned programming in 1985 on a 1960's Honeywell H-6000 mainframe computer that took up a whole climate-controlled, generator-backed building and had disk drives the size of washing machines. For you 'kiddies' here, this was a 'text only' environment. The technology just wasn't there yet for graphics, much less video and what you all call the 'internet' the GUI 'interface to the intenet' which has been around longer than you have been alive even though thru your public school education you don't even know that.

Here's my problem. Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for or WILL EVER RESPOND TO! Half the time I get an error about a 'wayward' SCRIPT that forces me to restart the browser or in some cases the whole damn system.

My hardware has been functioning perfectly since 2004 and I am too damn cheap to upgrade it to accomodate your memory hogging crap. (That includes the damn 'upgrades' to every piece of software in existence from the operating system to the simplest piece of application software. Most of you 'script kiddies' don't even know the distinction between those two types of software.)

Now the sites are pandering to 'social media'. If you want to give feedback to most major corporations, they don't even have their own websites advertised anymore, it's 'find us on facebook/putcorpnamehere. I'll be damned if I'm going to start a f**king facebook account just to get in touch with some business. How much like lemmings are these idiots anyway? Don't they realise that not everyone on the planet depends on their facebook account to breathe?

Back to you script kiddies. Can you be bothered to sit down to a meal and eat for 10, 20, 30 minutes (BTW, a nice 5 course meal lasts at least an hour if not more, and you can sit badk and ENJOY IT with NO DISTRACTIONS) without 'texting' or 'browsing' or 'social networking'?

Call me an old bastard or behind the 'times' but my quality of life is better than yours, I guarantee!

[the invisib1e hand]

if Bill Gates had a son, he'd look like script kiddies.

these little sh!ts would be serving up hamburgers if it weren't for him.

[the invisib1e hand]

some of my first programs were on punch cards. I remember the “Timex” computer. I owned a Commodore 64 and I used to spend hours playing Ms. Pac Man with my girlfriend.

[JRandomFreeper]

Prunes help. ;)

/johnny

[UB355]

Amen. My first programming was on a IBM 1130 in Fortran also on punch cards.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: I'll be damned if I'm going to start a f**king facebook account just to get in touch with some business.

I totally agreed.. and that goes for getting in touch with talk show hosts too.

As for businesses.. at least they can be reached by snail mail -- and I think a letter/email to the syndicator may reach the talk show host. Otherwise it's on to listen to someone else.

[the invisib1e hand]

If I'm not very much mistake, every pc out there is running an OS whose kernel was lifted from DEC by Bill Gates. So the legend goes (from a old time DECkie).

[the invisib1e hand]

If I'm not very much mistaken, every pc out there is running an OS whose kernel was lifted from DEC by Bill Gates. So the legend goes (from a old time DECkie).

[MileHi]

Here's my problem. Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for or WILL EVER RESPOND TO! Half the time I get an error about a 'wayward' SCRIPT that forces me to restart the browser or in some cases the whole damn system.

Getting to where I hate to click news links anymore because they take so long to load all the bloatware on their pages. I don't do farcebook/twit-her and I don't need car insurance or a school grant (click your age) or anything else.

[ICCtheWay]

Bloated code does not an application make... it just makes for a lot of loading loading loading. Visicalc - then Lotus 123 ran in DOS on 32K of RAM space and did magical things. Computers has 64 to 128 k of RAM - but an amazing amount of work was done. I had a word processor that ran on a PRE - PC S100 based computer - in a DOS like environment it was astounding in what it could do ... Today’s BLOATED WORD still cannot do what this little Word Processor could do ... Mountains of available RAM and Hard Drive Space just makes for bloated unresponsive applications with a thousand features that are used by the average user one time a year. I use the Editor in Thunderbird for all my document drafting - then dress it up in Word if I have to ... most of the time I don’t.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

My good computer's mother board bricked ( have to wait to repair ) so I'm using an old DELL somebody gave me as a web surfer. I doubled the memory to 500 MB using both memory slots which shows how old it is. Because of that, I've had to notice how much junk there is on a web page and not just ads. It does look like we're being coerced into buying a new computer before we need one.

[fr_freak]

I worked in IT for ten years or so, and I was always disgusted at the number of co-workers who were incapable of figuring out the hard stuff on their own. In the one mega-corporation that I worked for, we literally had to write out explicit step-by-step scripts for what I would consider basic procedures (software installs, OS builds, etc.). Even then, we would have some people who complained in meetings that the scripts weren't complete enough, because there was something like a stage where a message box came up saying "Continue - yes or no?" and the script morons wouldn't even know how to answer the question because it wasn't in the script. I estimated the ratio of people who actually knew what they were doing to the script kiddies to be 1:4.

I have since developed an observation/theory that the level of technology is quickly outstripping the ability of most people to comprehend it and service it properly, especially in this age of dumbed-down public schooling and ideology-driven curriculum at the universities, and that includes ALL areas - computer, automotive, medical, etc. If we don't collapse from economic forces, I think we'll eventually collapse from lack of knowledge and intelligence to be able to keep our own machines running.

[AppyPappy]

You old bastard

[olepap]

I sorted telephone records in 64K chunks using C. Those were the days. Sleeping on the floor. Fighting with Ray Mu, the other programmer. Very intense - It changed me forever!

[old-ager]

> Call me an old bastard or behind the ‘times’ but my quality of life is better than yours, I guarantee!

Heh Social Insecurity being paid by young people is helping keep a lot of old farts in the clover these days. Not necessarily you ...

[unixfox]

The problem these days is we spend more time fixing sh!t that’s broke on our computers than actually using them productively.

I’ve been running a computer business for almost 30 years and I swear it’s come down to this...

I’d rather have a hot dog stand. I’d be happier and certainly less stressed!

[upchuck]

Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for...

I had that problem until I installed the AdBlock+ add-on for Firefox. Advertisements just disappear. Give it a try.

FWIW, you and I have similar backgrounds. Like you, I seriously question the direction of the industry today.

[arasina]

Here's my problem. Nearly every time I pull up a web page it loads and loads and loads a bunch of useless crap and advertisements that I have NO use for or WILL EVER RESPOND TO!

Why, I was just thinking the same thing this morning! ;-)

No, really. Those scripts are horribly frustrating. It's as if a gigantic nest of digital cockroaches has infested the internet.

[Future Snake Eater]

Call me an old bastard or behind the 'times'

You sound like an old bastard who's behind the times, but I guess you might have had a little bit of fun (is that the right word--"fun"?) writing it...

[P.O.E.]

Everything I know I learned from Fortran77.

On punch cards.

I remember for one final exam we had to get the addresses to sort in alphabetical order.

The basics are still valuable today - we used to call them subroutines and database keywords, but you see them today under different guises.

[jonno]

Stretching my memory a bit; back in the 80’s I worked on the precision approach radar system used by the Marines (still??).

The processor was an USH-20 - programmed via the keyboard (no punch-cards - we were high tech).

The thing that sticks in my memory was the accuracy of the system. In fully automatic mode, the system would literally fly the planes in “hands-off”.

The story goes that the system was bringing the planes in to touch-down so close to the same spot every time that the runway was starting to crumble at that point.